Friday, May 18, 2012

Today in Labor History

May 18
In what may have been baseball’s first labor strike, the Detroit Tigers
refuse to play after team leader Ty Cobb is suspended: he went into the
stands and beat a fan who had been heckling him. Cobb was reinstated
and the Tigers went back to work after the team manager’s failed attempt
to replace the players with a local college team: their pitcher gave up
24 runs - 1912

Amalgamated Meat Cutters union organizers launch a campaign in the
nation’s packinghouses, an effort that was to bring representation to
100,000 workers over the following two years - 1917

Big Bill Haywood, a founding member and leader of the Industrial
Workers of the World (the Wobblies), dies in exile in the Soviet Union -
1928

Atlanta transit workers, objecting to a new city requirement that
they be fingerprinted as part of the employment process, go on strike.
They relented and returned to work six months later - 1950

Insurance Agents International Union and Insurance Workers of
America merge to become Insurance Workers International Union (later to
merge into the UFCW) - 1959

Oklahoma jury finds for the estate of atomic worker Karen Silkwood,
orders Kerr-McGee Nuclear Co. to pay $505,000 in actual damages, $10
million in punitive damages for negligence leading to Silkwood’s
plutonium contamination - 1979 [The Killing of Karen Silkwood is an updated edition of the
groundbreaking book about the death of union activist Karen Silkwood, an
employee of a plutonium processing plant, who was killed in a mysterious car
crash on her way to deliver important documents to a newspaper reporter in
1974. Silkwood’s death at age 28 was highly suspicious: she had been working on
health and safety issues at the plant, and a lot of people stood to benefit by
her death. In the UCS bookstore now.]

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The blog was started to talk about issues impacting the pressroom both positively and negatively. The views expressed here are not of the LA Times, but of each individual's opinion. The Pressmen's Club is composed of men and women who have printed the paper for twenty years or more. Semi-annual dinners are held in March and October. See Ed Padgett for more information.